Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

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THE FOUR AIMS OF LIFE Five (paíca) Looms or Warps (tantra),” i.e., “The Five Treatises," and the Hitopadesa, "Instruction (upadeśa) in What Is Advantageous and Beneficial (hita)." Of the systematic treatises, by far the most important is an encyclopedic work known as the Kauļilīya Arthasāstra, named after and traditionally attributed to Cāņakya Kauțilya, the legendary chancellor of Candragupta Maurya, who flourished at the end of the fourth century B.C. At the time of Alexander the Great's raid into northwestern India, 326 B.C., the northeastern provinces were governed by the Nanda dynasty: some five years following the raid, Candragupta, whose father may have been a Nanda, but whose mother was a woman of inferior birth, overthrew this house and sounded the empire of the Mauryas, one of the most powerful of Indian history. The political handbook attributed to the wise and crafty Brāhman who is supposed to have advised and supported him in his enterprise gives an extensive, detailed, and vivid picture of the style and techniques of Hindu government, statecrast, warfare, and public life, in the period in question.'* A much bricfer treatise, the so-called Bürhaspatya Arthaśāstra, is a compact collection of aphorisms supposed to have been rei caled by the divinity Bphaspati, the mythical chancellor, house-priest, and chief adviser in world politics of India, king of the gods.19 Still another summary is Kamandaki's Nitisūra,“The Extract, Juice,or Essence (sāra) of Government, or Proper Conduct (niti).”20 This is a
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18 Kautiliya Arthasastra, cdited by R. Shamasastry, Mysore, 1909; 2nd edition, reviscd, 1919. A translation by the same hand was published in Bangalore, 1915; 2nd edition, 1928.
19 Bärhaspatya Arthasāstra, cdited and translated by F. W. Thomas, Punjab Sanskrit Series, Lahore, 1921. For Bșhaspati, cf. infra, pp. 76-77.
2n Kamandakiya Nitisara, translated by M. N. Dutt, Wealth of India Scries, Calcutta, 1896. The verb nii mcans “to lead, convey, conduct, guide, govern, direct," and the noun niti: "direction, guidance, management; bchavior, propriety, decorum; course of action, policy; prudence, political wisdom, statesmanship.” Nilisära therefore is a synonym for arthasastra.
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